Archive for the ‘strange cars’ Category

Car customization can make your dreams come true – even if that dream is turning your mid-80’s domestic into a Porsche supercar. Case in point is this, uh, unique Pontiac Fiero, which someone transformed into a hilarious parrot of the Porsche Carrera GT.

The best part is that it’s listed on Ebay UK, so if you really want it, and have an extra $16,881 to spare, it could be yours. Don’t worry, we won’t judge you.

How about stripping a Chevrolet Corvette down, strapping in a 7.0-liter LS, and going after some world records for manual Corvettes? Sounds like an insane project to you? It sure didn’t sound too daunting to Cleetus McFarland, the creator of “Leroy The Savage.”

“Leroy The Savage” is, at its core, a Chevrolet Corvette C5 that was stripped of its bodywork and was able to run the quarter mile in 11 seconds with no other modifications. Then came an LSA supercharger and other mods that brought the time down to 9 seconds. McFarland then smelled blood and reckoned his creation could go after some records on the dragstrip and one thing led to another.

Hyundai is not yet sure it wants to make a full production version of the Santa Fe Cabriolet (and it probably won’t), but if it did, it’d be the world’s first seven-seater convertible… that’s also an SUV.

Fans of the Halo action video game series will instantly know what this vehicle is, but for those who don’t, here’s the short version: it’s called the M12 Force Application Vehicle, affectionately known as the Warthog, and it was a vehicle exclusively relegated to the virtual world, until a fan decided to make one in real life.

If you have Facebook or any other social media platform, you’ve probably seen video renderings of the traffic straddling bus that’s supposed to cure traffic woes all over the world. It was a novel idea, and like many ideas of that ilk, it was subject to a lot of debate. A lot of people loved it. A lot of people hated it. And that was when the straddling bus was nothing more but a rendering. If by some miracle it actually ended up becoming the real thing, imagine what kind of debate it would create. Well, let the words fly now because China has actually built a working prototype of the traffic straddling bus. More incredibly, it’s about to go on a real-life test run.

To be fair, the traffic straddling bus isn’t just an idea that was thought of one day and created the next. The proposal has actually been on the table for years but it wasn’t until May 2016 when an actual mini model – yes, that happened too – was unveiled at the 19th China Beijing International High-Tech Expo and computer-generated renderings of the bus hit social media. Since then, the video has been shared viewed and shared millions of times with some people lauding the ingenuity behind it while others openly mocked the idea as a too much of a “Jetsons kind of thing.”

The reactions surrounding the proposal didn’t deter the developers of the bus, who, somewhat shockingly, only took a few months to actually create the first prototype of the Transit Elevated Bus (TEB), as it will come to be known from now one. That test run will take place in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, about 186 miles southwest of Beijing. Since the TEB is still a long ways away from becoming fully functional, the initial run will only feature one bus carriage running on a controlled track measuring just 300 meters in length. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

Once it becomes fully operation – if it ever reaches that point – one TEB can will be able to carry as many as 1,200 passengers at a time and travel at speeds of about 37 miles per hour. More importantly, it would prove to be a far cheaper solution than building subways or train platforms. It still sounds a little silly thinking about it, but the TEB has made it this far to remain skeptical about its potential. All that’s left for the developers is to make sure that it lives up to that potential.

History has been cruel to any number of cars, and even carmakers, but the story of Tatra and the T87 might bring a tear to the eyes of some enthusiasts. Tatra was a Czechoslovak company from the days when that was a thing. It is mostly famous for making the V570, the car Ferdinand Porsche is said to have ripped off for the design of the Volkswagen Beetle. A lawsuit from Tatra over the design was only stopped by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. But it was the T87 that was Tatra’s real masterpiece. Far from being a “people’s car,” the T87 was a marvel of design and technology at the time.

WWII was obviously hugely disruptive to a lot more than just the automotive industry, but it was ultimately also the reason why so few T87s were ever made. The car has never really managed to break out of the near-obscurity it was born into in 1936. It was produced after the war, all the way up until 1950, but it never really took off in terms of sales. But one showed up at Pebble Beach this year, and that’s always a good enough reason to sing its praises once again.

Disruptive innovation. Disruptive. Innovation. You know, I think that might be my favorite two-word phrase of all time. Better than “first car” or “first kiss,” better than “Buick Regal,” “I do” or even “Your place.” There’s just something about those words that sings true to everything right (or at least constructively anarchist) in my being.

“Disruptive innovation.”

Punk rock.

An innovation is said to be “disruptive” when it forces a rapid enough change to an entire market that those involved will either be forced to adopt an entirely new business model, or shut doors forever. It creates entirely new markets and value systems by designing for a new set of consumers, and eventually drops prices for existing consumers. Some examples might include the Model T for automobiles, Wikipedia for traditional encyclopedias, LEDs for light bulbs, computer printing to movable type, and of course (here’s looking at you, kid), the internet. Disruptive innovation is like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs; it’s London burning and plague rats rolled into one – particularly if you happen to get caught on the wrong side of it.

Here in this century – nevermind electric cars or clean energy – self-driving cars will almost certainly prove to be the most disruptive innovation since the steam engine. Or at least the Model T. Not just to the automobile industry, either; to every industry with which automobiles are even tangentially connected, including mining, manufacturing and of course, energy. That might sound like hyperbole, but you can bet that the guys with the big wallets take this looming disruption very seriously indeed.

You have to wonder if the dinosaurs did the same – just before it was too late to matter.

In this two-part article, we’re first going to look at the surprisingly long timeline of the self-driving car, from the first radio control systems proposed all the way back at the 1939 World’s Fair, to the ultimate evolution of its visionary concept. We’re going to go way past the “Level 4” self-driving systems most people imagine when they hear the words “autonomous car,” and crank this disruptively technological dial all the way up to 11. You might be surprised at how close we already are to unbelievable things, how much closer we’re getting to the almost unimaginable, and how much we already owe to those who imagined those things first.

The second half of this article will be something like the second half of the “Future of Electric Cars,” published last month. In the second part, we’re going to go into the social (and more importantly) economic aspects of the self-driving systems we’ll have soon. There’s a reason manufacturers and oil barons are terrified of these things; you’ll find out exactly why they fear this particular asteroid so much in the second half.

Then again, it’s not as though they didn’t have plenty of warning. Unlike the dinosaurs, auto manufacturers have seen this fireball coming for almost a century. And that’s where we start – with the first glimpse of one disruptive innovation, and a techno-punk vision that will shape our future.

Meet “The Neverending Article.” It seems like a pretty straightforward proposition, right? Compare and contrast the major motivators out there today. No problem. And it probably wouldn’t have been, if we’d just stopped at Part I of this article, which focused almost exclusively on powertrain options available for the last 20 years or so. But here in The Future, the minute you think you’re done writing about one kind of powertrain, you’re right back to recycling the intro from the last article to open the next one.

But hasn’t that been the way of the automotive industry for the last century or so? Slightly modifying a product that was mediocre to begin with so it seems relevant compared to similarly mediocre products? The next iteration is rarely about net improvement so much as it is keeping up with the neighbors. It’s a Sisyphean task indeed, not recycling the same crap from last year; over-using the same tired approaches for decades, and pretending as though “new and improved” weren’t a suspiciously relative compliment at best.

In Part II of our Powertrain Showdown, we’re going to go over some of the “weirder” technologies out there. Though probably the weirdest thing about a lot of them is how recycled they actually are. Sure, taken out of context, some of these ideas seem a little bit out there in left field; but a lot of them have been around at least as long as today’s powertrains. It’s just that they, like hybrid and electric technologies, have languished in under-development from the century-long scourge of cheap gasoline.

But, you have to give antiquated piston-engine technology this: it did make writing about powertrains a pretty straightforward endeavor for a while. At least when you were done talking about gas and diesel, you were done talking. Unlike today, where our Neverending Article continues with Part II, and our boulder rolls right back down the hill again.

The Lyons Motor Car LM2 Streamliner was a no-show for the press days of the New York Auto Show, but the promise of the first-ever American-made hypercar finally made its way to the Javits Center yesterday… courtesy of a flatbed tow truck. Although chances are slim to none that the 1,700-horsepower amorphous blob will ever become a reality, show-goers will at least get an up-close look at what has to be one of the craziest concept cars since the 1990s.

As if the car’s absence from the media days last week wasn’t a big enough letdown, Lyons Motor Car didn’t help its case on social media. Yesterday, the company’s Facebook page posted three low-quality images of the car being delivered to the show floor. This isn’t exactly a promising start for a startup automaker already receiving plenty of skepticism.

To be fair, it’s probably not easy for an independent company trying to compete for media time at a major auto show. Of all the vehicles to debut at the New York Auto Show – both planned and as surprises – the Lyons Motor Car LM2 Streamliner was to be one of the most intriguing, with its odd styling and outlandish power and performance claims. In addition to the aforementioned power rating from the rear-mounted, twin-turbo V-8, Lyons Motor Car also claims that the LM2 Streamliner can accelerate from 0-60 mph in just 2.2 seconds “or better,” as well as run the quarter-mile in eight seconds.